The information provided below is not admitted to be prior art to the present invention, but is provided solely to assist the understanding of the reader.
Wave energy can be considered as a concentrated form of solar energy. Winds, generated by the differential heating of the earth, pass over open bodies of water, transferring some of their energy to form waves. The amount of energy transferred, and hence the size of the resulting waves, depends on the wind speed, the length of time for which the wind blows and the distance over which it blows (the fetch). The World Energy Council has estimated the useful world-wide wave energy resource at >2 TW. (See Thorpe TW, “An Overview of Wave Energy Technologies: Status, Performance and Costs,” in Wave Power: Moving towards Commercial Viability, 30 Nov. 1999, Broadway House, Westminster, London.
Many devices have been proposed to recover power from the energy contained in ocean waves. However, most of the proposed devices have suffered from being massive in size and having correspondingly high capital and generating costs. Therefore, a need exists for power generation devices that do not suffer from the flaws of prior art devices.